‘Unorthodox’ Showrunner Anna Winger on Algorithms, ‘Misused’ Writers’ Rooms and How Understanding Budgets Is a Writer’s ‘Superpower’

At the Thessaloniki Film Festival as part of the Agora Series workshops, British-American writer, showrunner and executive producer Anna Winger — who created Netflix’s “Unorthodox,” co-created the streamer’s “Transatlantic,” and co-created Prime Video’s “Deutschland 83” — spoke at length about the evolution of the role of the showrunner, the misconceptions around writers’ rooms and the importance of writers having a sharp understanding of the economics of TV making.

“To me, showrunning is everything about how an idea manifests on screen, and there are so many moving pieces,” said Winger. “Making a TV show is like running a circus. Nothing is so unimportant that I wouldn’t care about… Music, costume, make-up, props…”

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On working with major broadcasters and streamers such as Netflix, Winger emphasizes how important it is to lay down clear lines of collaboration from the get-go. “It really matters how you articulate the show you’re gonna make so the person who’s buying it from you signs on to the same vision.”

“That person is your partner in realizing that vision and you are going to get a lot of notes and sometimes they are going to drive you crazy and you have to believe they want to make the same show and share the vision for where you’re going,” she continued, adding that what a network executive is doing is akin to the work of a publishing editor in that they are “trying to take the raw material and help guide you to a place where people will watch it. They know a lot more about what people watch than you do.”

Also on streamers, Winger spoke about the myth of how algorithms will serve shows on a platter to unsuspecting audiences on streamers. Promotion remains a key component of her work. “In the era of algorithms, a lot of people will tell you that you don’t need to promote a show and that the computer will do it for you. But I don’t think that’s entirely true. I think something has to kick in for the algorithm to start pushing it. You have to do the initial legwork to get the push.”

Promotion might also include extra content on certain shows, with Winger mentioning how she found great success with two in-house films she produced on the making of “Unorthodox” and “Transatlantic,” which were made available on Netflix alongside both series. “Both of them have been popular. People like to see how shows are made and get an inside feel of what it is like to be part of those productions.”

Another great point of focus for Winger was the importance of writers being aware of the budget needs of a project from the moment the idea begins to gestate. “The sooner you step up to the plate of the budget questions, the sooner you are able to execute your own work.”

“It is not enough just to write something, you have to write something with the money that you have,” added the writer. “That sounds negative, but I feel the financial limitations can sometimes provide creative opportunities. If you can make something for less, there is a direct correlation with how much creative freedom you can have.”

“If we had said we wanted to make a show in Yiddish for a huge amount of money, it would have been harder to get it made,” she said, referring to the four-episode drama “Unorthodox,” which trails a Hasidic Jewish woman who flees an arranged marriage in Brooklyn to start a new life in Berlin. “If you’re working outside of the U.S. on creatively ambitious projects, it’s an advantage to know how to spend the money. That becomes a superpower.”

Being on top of the budget also grants writers more control over their narratives, highlighted Winger. “If you don’t make those decisions,” she said, speaking about budget changes, “other people are going to make the decisions for you about what gets cut.”

Given that she was delivering a masterclass in Greece, where writers’ rooms are not as popular as in the U.S., Winger received several questions about the dynamics of the format. In response, the exec said she feels “writers’ rooms are often misused.”

“As the head writer of a show, you have to be prepared to rewrite other people’s scripts. I think the fantasy that other people are going to write scripts that you can use is asking too much of episode writers because the voice, the thing that carries a show, should be coming from the head writer,” she expanded. “In an ideal world, you would get pretty good scripts and then be able to do another pass at the end so the voice sounds like yours.”

Winger added that in Europe, writers’ rooms are often seen as “a place to invent a show,” which comes as a problem as they lack a head writer. “You have a bunch of people brainstorming around an idea but there isn’t someone driving the process. While it takes a village to write, make and execute a TV show, I do think that at some point there has to be someone whose vision is clear for where we’re going from the beginning to the end.”

“I think the writer needs to function in support of the head writer. That’s where it’s really useful,” concluded the showrunner.